AIDS STRUCK HOME

By GINA KOLATA; Gina Kolata is a medical and science reporter for The New York Times.

Published: April 8, 1990

THANKSGIVING

An AIDS Journal.

By Elizabeth Cox.

230 pp. New York:

Harper & Row. $18.95.

Elizabeth Cox has lived through one of the worst nightmares of our time. Shortly after she and her husband celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary he became seriously, mysteriously ill. He was in London at the time, and was hospitalized with severe pneumonia. The doctors there finally figured out what was wrong. Keith Avedon, Ms. Cox's husband, had AIDS.

Thus began a two-year odyssey for Ms. Cox and Mr. Avedon. His eyesight failed, he was repeatedly hospitalized, he became weaker and weaker, and at last, in 1987, he asked Ms. Cox to help him take his own life and she complied.

In ''Thanksgiving: An AIDS Journal,'' Ms. Cox recounts her struggle to care for Mr. Avedon. The story is heartbreaking, and not just because AIDS is a terrible disease. Confronted by the stigma of AIDS and of Mr. Avedon's homosexual relationships (which she discovered only after his illness had struck), Ms. Cox and Mr. Avedon chose to keep the true nature of his illness a secret from all but their closest friends and relatives. Thus they both suffered a self-imposed social isolation that was compounded by real rejection by some of the people who knew the truth.

Not only were they isolated from friends and acquaintances, they were also cut off by members of their own families. Ms. Cox wrote letters to Mr. Avedon's parents and his uncle asking for money to help pay for medicines. ''No one has responded to my letters,'' Ms. Cox writes, and when she called Mr. Avedon's father to plead for help, she says, he turned her down, saying he could not afford it. A cousin, the photographer Richard Avedon, helped financially, she writes.

Even though I was deeply moved by Ms. Cox's story, I have a few reservations about her book. In a subtle way, it perpetuates the us-and-them thinking that has made life so difficult for many people with AIDS. For example, she expresses a subtle prejudice against gays when she writes, ''Keith is not a gay man. If I can't trust that belief, then I have to rethink, reinterpret what my memories of him and me mean.''

She also implies that homosexuality is something that must be explained. ''Why did you do that?'' she asks her husband about his past. Then she reports, ''He told me about the sexual abuse that had occurred when he was growing up. . . . For the moment my anger dissolved. That was enough of an explanation for me.'' Although it satisfied her, I doubt many experts would agree that homosexuality is caused by sexual abuse. Where would that leave other gay men who have not been abused? Are their sexual inclinations somehow their fault? Must they find an explanation too? My other difficulty with this book is that I never really got to know much about Mr. Avedon. Ms. Cox almost brushes off his thoughts and his despair. His courage and the times he rallies against all odds are similarly described as simply mysterious or amazing. For example, she writes, ''Keith amazed me. Just when I was beginning to think of him as an invalid, he regained control. But how he was able to do this in his condition I can't imagine.''

Ms. Cox writes repeatedly that she comes from a family that maintains a public mask to protect its privacy. Keeping the family faith, she seems a little too conscious of what she might be revealing in this journal, and draws back rather than allowing the reader in.

Ms. Cox writes in an epilogue that she published her story because ''I began to feel that everyone touched by AIDS must tell his or her story until the stories are part of the fabric of our society. The stories can teach and enrich our lives so that we can respond to the horror of AIDS responsibly and with compassion.''